


stay here now

by difranxo



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: 2x22, Comfort, F/M, Fix-it fic, Humor, Hurt, Love, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-23
Updated: 2018-05-23
Packaged: 2019-05-13 00:57:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14739092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/difranxo/pseuds/difranxo
Summary: FP finds the courage to walk across the street and check in on a grieving Alice.[set in 2x22 when FP was at Fred’s]





	stay here now

**Author's Note:**

> Another scene I wish we were rightfully given. Obviously, he would’ve visited her if he was just right across the street. 
> 
> Inspired by Grace VanderWaal’s “Clearly.”

“I know you’re worried about her.”

FP looks up suddenly from his coffee, wondering if he heard him right. The sizzling of the pan along with the hustle and bustle of the Serpents around them has been white noise in his ears. 

Fred has his back turned, busy turning over bacon, but he could feel the slight knowing tone in his voice. 

“What are you talking about?”

He doesn’t know where this conversation is going. It’s been years since they’ve talked about her, at least in this way. 

“She needs someone, you know,” Fred says over his shoulder. “She’s not doing well.”

“Her daughters are looking after her,” FP says as a matter of fact because quite frankly, it’s true. 

Fred walks over to the table where FP is sitting and sets down a hot plate in front of him. He looked at FP square in the eyes. 

“When I said ‘someone,’ I meant you,” he quips. 

FP sighed, already tired of this conversation. He already has too many variables zooming around in his brain. The Serpents, his lost job, and Hiram the Devil Incarnate. Adding Alice to the list might just make him explode. Not that he doesn’t care but he can trust that she can take care of herself. She’s strong like that, unlike himself. 

“What makes you think I haven’t checked on her?”

“Getting info from your son who’s getting info from his girlfriend doesn’t count as checking in.”

“Well, I say it does.”

FP was about to reach for a piece of bacon but Fred slapped his hand away with the spatula. 

“Hey!” FP hissed in pain, rubbing the back of his hand.

“That’s for Alice.”

“Then why did you give it to me?”

“Because Jones,” Fred said while pulling FP from his seat in a surprisingly efficient manner. “You’re going to walk across the street and give it to her.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

FP tried to squirm away from the other man’s grip on his shoulder, but to no avail. He was being led towards the front door.

Fred pushed FP out into the daylight and shoved him the plate. “You don’t have a choice.”

But before FP could protest, Fred slammed the door shut in his face and locked it for good measure. He had a strange feeling that the other man was laughing on the opposite side of the door. 

“I’m gonna need my plate back,” Fred yelled. 

FP groaned in frustration, the plate in his hand taunting him. He turned around and faced the familiar white house across the street. He fought he urge to just eat the bacon, wait a few minutes, then ring the doorbell and string some hot lie. But he found himself walking towards her house anyway. 

He glanced briefly at his bike halfway through, wishing he wasn’t in this situation. It’s not like they’re on bad terms. They’re fine. It’s just that he doesn’t know how to handle himself around her ever since the night she told him about Charles. 

Although, god knows he’d been avoiding her since the musical. This is the complicated thing about Alice. He can’t just compartmentalize his feelings for her. Once he’s with her, everything good and bad floods his system all at once. He loves her, he hates her. Wants to be with her, wants to stay away from her. He can’t have one or the other. 

He knocked on the door and waited, a part of him wanting quite desperately for her to ignore the disruption. What could he possibly say when she opens the door? _I know I wasn’t there for you when your husband turned out to be the Black Hood but I’m here now and I brought you bacon?_ He rolled his eyes. 

His heart rate picked up when he heard faint footsteps and then the lock turning. The door swung open. 

“FP?” Her voice was soft but laced with confusion. 

His eyes scanned her immediately, taken aback by her appearance. Her hair was a mess, her pajamas mismatched, and the circles under her eyes were enough for concern to furrow in his brow. He shouldn’t stare but he can’t help it. Her eyes were sad and hollow, but they were still as blue as clear water. She’s beautiful. 

“Are you okay?” Alice reached out and placed a hand on his shoulder. 

He cleared his throat, a blush creeping up to his cheeks. This is not how this was supposed to go. 

“I’m fine,” he says, hating how breathless he sounds. “I brought you breakfast.”

He tried handing her the plate but she just glanced at it and then stared at him with an expression he can’t understand. He wonders if she could hear his heart galloping in his chest. 

He wished she would take it already. He can’t bear the thought of making a fool of himself again. But instead of accepting, she stepped back to welcome him in. His breath hitched at the prospect of entering her home but there was also exhilaration because there’s a part of him that wants to be near her. 

“I’m not getting any younger,” she sighed dramatically raising an eyebrow playfully. She gave him a weak smile. 

He had a feeling that she didn’t want to be alone. He can already see her uncertainty through the subtle purse of her lips. She’s just as nervous about this as he is. So he steps inside, cursing himself, and follows her to the dining room. 

“Sit down,” she said as she continued to the kitchen. 

“Thanks.”

He sat down and placed the plate on the mahogany table, feeling somewhat unwelcome despite being invited in. Every inch of his being didn’t bode well being in such a privileged house. His leather jacket and dusty shoes were a stark reminder that he was an outsider in this part of town. 

“Here,” she says when she returned, handing him a fork. “I don’t feel like eating.”

“But Fred made it for you.”

“What Fred doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” she countered, taking his hand to give him the fork before sitting down right across from him. “Besides, you look like you need it.”

“You look like you need it more,” he smirked. 

She gave him a look but smiled a second later despite her exhaustion. He chuckled because just for a second, he saw a hint of amusement in her eyes. He saw the Alice he knows. 

He inhaled sharply, ready to get his hands dirty because what he was about to do might just break the pleasant air between them. 

“I heard about Hal,” he said as calmly as he could. 

“Who didn’t?”

She shrugged her shoulders in faux nonchalance. He can tell she’s trying to lighten the mood, trying to distract herself from the darkness she’s been wallowing in. But he knows that playing along would just make her worse in the long run. 

“I’m being serious.”

“So am I.”

He tried to ignore the way her jaw clenched and the anguish in her voice that’s becoming more and more prominent. 

“Alice...”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she said, clearly irritated that he won’t let the subject go. But unfortunately for her, he’s as insistent as she is. 

“Then when are you going to talk about it?”

She glared at him, suddenly regretting her decision to invite him in. She stood up without another word and walked back to the kitchen. She took a glass from the sink and poured herself some whiskey. 

Alarmed, FP promptly followed right behind her. He knows what this looks like. Have seen it a thousand times from his parents. Have seen it right in front of the mirror. This is a woman in self-destruction. 

“It’s nine in the morning,” he reminded her. 

She turned to face him and downed the drink in one go, making damn sure she looked at him straight in the eye while she was at it. 

“Does it look like I care?”

Before she could reach for a round two, FP lunged for the bottle. 

“Alice, please let me help you,” he pleaded. 

“Then give me the bottle,” she snapped, trying to snatch the bottle that he was successfully keeping above her reach. “FP, I swear on all that is holy, if you don’t—“

“—this is not how you fix things!”

Alice gave up on fighting him, looked at him incredulously and started to laugh. “That’s rich coming from you.”

Her tone stung him and if he wasn’t so focused on helping her, he would’ve have fought back. Spat venom on how this whole mess started when she decided to leave him twenty years ago. That even though she had every right to point fingers, she shared the blame too. 

Tears started to stream uncontrollably down her face and her body shook with every goddamn emotion she’d been keeping at bay.

“I deserved all of this,” she sobbed. “I had it coming.”

At her words, FP quickly erased the distance between them without a second thought. He enveloped her in his arms and she hung on to him before her knees gave away underneath her. 

“Don’t say that,” he whispered. 

“But it’s true.”

He didn’t want to hear any more of what she had to say. They weren’t true. She didn’t deserve all of this. She didn’t deserve any of it. 

He kissed the top of her head before hoisting her up. As if on automatic, she buried her head on the space between his neck and shoulder. He likes that she feels safe around him, secure enough to know that he will take care of her. 

He looked around for the stairs but quickly thought better of it. She probably wouldn’t appreciate lying on a bed she shared with a serial killer. Instead, he walked over to where the couch was and laid her down on the soft cushion as gently as he could. He kneeled beside her. 

“Alice, listen to me,” he said, his thumb caressing her cheek as she turned to face him. “What that asshole did to you and to Betty was all on him. This isn’t your fault.”

“But I was so blind.” She shook her head, still taking responsibility for sins she didn’t commit. “I could’ve done something.”

“Stop blaming yourself.”

She gripped the hand he was resting on her cheek. 

“I could’ve save Midge. She was right there next to me. And Fred, he could’ve died because I was too stupid to realize what he was.”

“Their blood is on his hands, not yours.”

She was looking somewhere beyond him, not hearing a single word he’d said. He could tell that she was already lost in her own world. She was like a Pandora’s Box that he’d just opened and now all the pent up self-loathing in her life was coming out. He could only wait until hope came out of her in the end. 

“And Charles,” she whispered, as if the name was some secret curse. “He wanted me to give him away or he’d break it off with me, so I did.”

FP could only stare at her now, feeling as helpless as she is. This is specifically why he’d been avoiding her. It’s not that he doesn’t want to hear about their son because he does. He just thinks he’s not ready for a talk like this anytime soon. But she continued. 

“I gave up my son for a ticket out of the Southside.”

Her voice is coarse from the crying but the way she said those words hung heavy between them. He knew that she left him because he couldn’t give her a life better than he was capable of giving himself. He assumed then when she told him about Charles that the reason for giving him up for adoption was the same. But she never actually told him that until now. 

She looked at him desperately, waiting for a response that he wasn’t able to supply her. His hand now lay limp on her chest. 

“You hate me, don’t you?”

He sighed because she should be right. He should hate her for being selfish, for not having faith in him then, for expecting too much. But he doesn’t.

“No, I don’t hate you.”

And that was the undeniable truth. He was incapable of hating her. 

She gave him a sad smile because she doesn’t believe him. But she accepts his answer anyway. 

“I don’t know who I am anymore. I don’t know how to go on like this.”

“You don’t have to do this alone.”

She tugged on his hand. 

“Then why aren’t you lying next to me?”

Taken aback by the sudden turn of conversation, a laugh escaped him. She smiled, a real one now and so he moves to lay beside her. 

Once he was settled, she ran her fingers through his hair, enjoying the soft feel of it under her touch. She looked into his beautiful brown eyes, dark and soft all at once. Then her gaze dropped to his lips. They’re so close now, she realizes. She can feel his breath on her cheek. 

“You know,” he smirked. “If you want to kiss me, you could just ask.”

She raised her eyebrow in challenge. 

“I have to ask?”

He captured her lips in hers at once, loving the way her kisses make him feel like he’s flying. Her tongue darts out in silent invitation and he welcomes her in. She tastes bitter from the whiskey but there’s a sweetness he knows that is unmistakably her. 

The kiss was soft and patient, unlike the one they shared in his trailer weeks ago. This wasn’t the result of pining for twenty years, of regrets and missed chances. They kissed like lovers who’s never been apart. They took their time, remembering and memorizing each other. They let each other feel the words they can’t say, the feelings they haven’t the strength to fully embrace, the apologies that were always on the tip of their tongues. 

He parts from her with a sigh, already regretting it but there was something he wanted to say that was too important to wait. He fears that if he doesn’t say it now, he never will. 

“I’ll always be by your side.”

Alice hums against his chest, not quite knowing what to say in return. But she feels a little lighter at his promise, a hint of optimism at her fingertips. She wants to believe him so badly it hurts. It’s not that she doubts him, but things tend to change without her permission. She can just hope that wherever they end up, they will still be right next to each other at the finish line. 

“Do you mean that?”

“Cross my heart.”

He draws an X over his heart with a finger. Alice chuckles, taking his hand in hers and placing soft kisses on his knuckles before intertwining them. 

She doesn’t say anything else, just simply closes her eyes and breathes him in. For the first time in days, she feels safe.

“Go to sleep,” he whispers. 

Her eyes open suddenly, a bit fearful at the suggestion. But there’s something about being in his arms that makes her want to succumb to her exhaustion. Maybe this time there wouldn’t be nightmares, as long as he’s with her. 

“And you’ll be here when I wake up?”

“Promise.”

He kissed her on the forehead, nudging her to slumber and she caves in to his request. She wraps an arm around his waist to pull him closer to her and closes her eyes finally.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Don’t forget to let me know what y’all think! xo


End file.
